For RiverOtter, my beloved beta reader, for her birthday. She wanted something sparkly. Beta by RiverOtter.

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Announcing One’s Love

Having left his pony at the Green Dragon, Pippin paused in his walk up the lane to Bag End to take a moment beneath the mallorn tree in the Party Field. He set his hand to the silver bark and murmured, “I hope your birthday is joyful, Frodo. I wanted to let you know—I’m in love! In love with Diamond of the North-Tooks, there in Long Cleeve. Do you remember her at all? She was always such a mischievous little thing, with no time at all for lads. Although she always hung on your stories. But then we all did!

“Anyway, although I fear she didn’t take to me at all at first, by the time I was finished with my visit to Long Cleeve on Lord Strider’s business I knew she was the one for me, and she was actually smiling at me. She gave me this flute for her birthday! Listen!”

He brought out the worn flute from the bag on his shoulder. He warmed it between his hands, and began playing one of Bilbo’s songs on it.

*******

Far away, on the Lonely Isle, Frodo raised his head as if listening. “What is it?” asked Gandalf.

And Frodo turned back to the picture he was drawing, singing along to Pippin’s tune played on Diamond’s flute, while sparkles of light filtered through the foliage of the White Tree across the parchment on which he sketched the nearly forgotten face of Diamond North-Took.